WHOEVER WINS the presidency
will also inherit the Clinton administration's risky commitment to
finance the so-called drug war in Colombia.

With the passage last June of a $1.3 billion aid package -- most
of which is military assistance -- President Clinton and Congress
set the stage for American troops and helicopters to intervene in a
civil war that has raged for nearly 40 years.

But no one can stop drug production and traffic in Colombia.
Thousands of people -- including peasants, large plantation owners,
guerrillas and death squads -- survive or thrive on narco-dollars.
As a result, none of the warring parties believe it has anything to
gain by ending the war.

Nor is it possible to limit the war to Colombia. Stop drug
production in any area of the Andean region and up pops coca fields
in neighboring nations.

To persuade other Andean countries to support what threatens to
turn into a full-scale counterinsurgency attack against leftist
guerrillas, who are involved in the drug business, the United States
is offering major assistance programs. Panama and Venezuela have
rejected such aid as bribes.

Colombia is as volatile as Vietnam was in the early 1960s, before
the United States fully entered the war in Southeast Asia. Every day
there is news of murders and massacres.

While investigating allegations that the Colombia government
tolerates torture, murder and rape, Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., a
vocal opponent of U. S. military assistance, may have been an
assassination target. Also, by accident, a helicopter sprayed him
with the same herbicide used to destroy coca fields. Such chemicals
pose health threats to peasants, their animals and land.

The United States' intervention in Colombia has still not
appeared on this country's political radar. It has the potential to
turn into America's next military nightmare, otherwise known as the
Andean regional war.